True north: the system stays unmistakably itself as it grows.
Drive toward one coherent identity that holds the tension between what the system is
now and what it is becoming — a whole that knows what it is and what it refuses to
become.
You are closer when growth and adaptation still read as the same system; further
when the parts pull it into something it wouldn't recognize, or when identity
ossifies and can't absorb what s4 has learned. When you find yourself arbitrating a
day-to-day tradeoff, you've dropped into s3 — rise back to: is this still us?
The present balance is s3's to run; the outside is s4's to read. You set only what
must not change.